


A Day in the Life of the Guy Who Owns This Town

by NOT_Kirie_Goshima



Category: Uzumaki | Spiral (2000)
Genre: Canon Related, Closeted Character, Drinking to Cope, F/M, M/M, Slice of Life, poor Shuichi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4532733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NOT_Kirie_Goshima/pseuds/NOT_Kirie_Goshima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shuichi Saito has a lot on his mind, lately -- his incompetent students, running his town, his family going insane, trying to stay in the closet, Reporter Tamura's irritating hotness, keeping the news of his family's insanity from getting too widespread, and of course, whether or not to just straight-up reject Kirie. Balancing all this bullshit should be easy, for such a genius; that is, if he could just *feel* anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day in the Life of the Guy Who Owns This Town

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [In Which Two Total Dicks play Mario Kart Wii](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4412363) by [NOT_Kirie_Goshima](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NOT_Kirie_Goshima/pseuds/NOT_Kirie_Goshima). 



> Translations of what Shuichi was saying in Korean:  
> Geseki = Son of a bitch  
> Ko chu pal uh = Suck my dick  
> Toejora = Go to hell

***7:43 IN THE MORNING***

It was 7:43 in the morning, and Professor Kobayashi was thorougly irritated. Why? Easy: Mr. Saito had just shown up for work. He was supposed to be there at 7:30. That smug ass was always late, he was. And he didn’t even give a shit, either. He just greeted Kobayashi with that ever-present blank expression, made a few annoyingly good points about why the school needed him, and strutted off to his classroom. The conversation was virtually the same everyday;

“You, Mr. Saito, are thirteen minutes late.”

“ _Geseki._ It hardly counts as late anymore, Kobayashi. I’m here at this time every day.”

“You–! You’re supposed to be here at 7:30, and address me as Professor Kobayashi!” “Yeah, uh huh. Well, Professor Kobayashi, your hissy fit is making me even later.”

“Why–”

“Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’ll be getting to my classroom now. So long, farewell.” What a pompous little jerk, right? Kobayashi stormed off to his office.

***8:30 IN THE MORNING***

It was 8:30 in the morning, and the students of class 12-B were thoroughly afraid. Why? Easy: their psychology teacher, whom they had for first period, was an ass. The dreaded Mr. Saito, the most condescending person in Japan, maybe the world. The moment everybody heard a door creaking shut, their heads snapped towards the doorway. There he was, the infamous psych teacher. Quite short, tanned skin, black hair ridiculously gelled back, dressed casually and mostly in greens and blacks. He wasn’t particularly good-looking. In fact, he was almost ugly. But nobody would ever say that out loud. Even behind his back.

“Aaalright, everyone get your textbooks and read ‘em. I shouldn’t have to remind you of where you’re at. If there’s questions, get some paper and answer 'em. I’m not gonna do jack, because you guys are adults or practically so, and I have some shi–stuff to write. Get to it!”

Nobody needed to be told twice. As it turned out, the ‘stuff’ Mr. Saito needed to write’ was completely unintelligible mathematic stuff.

***3:45 IN THE AFTERNOON***

The bike ride home was usually quite irritating for Mr. Saito. It was okay up until the tunnel into his town, Kurôzu-Cho, because there, he had to pick up this annoying girl who was positively infatuated with him, and after that, he had to listen to stupid Officer Futada prattle on about riding his bike the wrong way. As if the police had any authority over him. He owned them! He owned the whole town. Nobody had any business telling him how to ride his goddamn bike. Sure enough, as soon as he came to the end of the tunnel, that high-pitched voice shrieked,

“Shuiiichiii-kuuun~!”

God, that voice was annoying! Mr. Saito, whose first name was apparently Shuichi, knew it was a trend with teenage girls–to purposefully make their voices higher and breathier in order to sound 'cute’–but Shuichi found it stupid.

“I won today! Isn’t that cool?”

 _No_ , Shuichi thought to himself, _you’re stupid_ , shut up. Instead of saying that, he just didn’t talk. After what seemed like eighty-two years, the girl finally shut up. Good, okay, that made this a bit more bearable. But she was clinging to him. He could barely steer properly with her doing that! Her arms were restricting his, and her ridiculously huge boobs were pressing into his back, and it was annoying as fuck. He had half a mind to just drop her off here and make her walk the rest of the way. They neared the police station, and Shuichi braced himself. Sure enough,

“GODDAMMIT, SAITO! THAT BIKE IS ONLY SUPPOSED TO CARRY ONE PERSON! H-HEY, ARE YOU LISTENING? SAITO!”

" _Ko chu pal uh_ , Futada."

Shuichi muttered blandly. Maybe if Futada called him 'sama’ or 'dono,’ he’d consider listening.

***STILL ROUGHLY 3:45 IN THE AFTERNOON***

The creaky-ass swingset by the pond was nice. At least, it was nice when…Kazumi? Kaori? Whatever her name was wasn’t there. She squealed on and on about how her and her dad had won a melon or something, and whined about math exams, and made doe eyes at Shuichi because obviously she couldn’t take a hint–no, five years of hints, now–that a guy just wasn’t into her. Especially a twenty-one-year-old. She was, what, fifteen? Ew! It took a damn lot to made Shuichi uncomfortable, and a really dumb-ass fifteen-year-old totally did it.

“I-it must be nice…to be as smart as S-Shuichi-kun. You could get into any university at all…”

_Okay but, what if I don’t feel like it? And for the love of god, stop saying–_

“H-hey, Shuichi-kun?”

 _–SHUICHI-KUN! I am twenty-one for god’s sake_! The young teacher sighed dramatically.

“What is it, Kirie?”

 _I think that’s her name_.

“Would you like t-to come to my house?"

 _No?_ Another sigh.

"I guess."

Why had he said yes? Now he’d have to put up with both Goshimas and their endless fangirling. And their house smelled terrible.

***3:50 IN THE AFTERNOON***

Smoke everywhere. Everywhere. And the whole place reeked of mud, burnt food, dirty clothes, and super-cheap perfume. Not to mention this so-called 'house’ was an extremely run-down four-room shack that to Shuichi barely qualified as a seasonal cottage. Oh, and this dump was occupied by the two most annoying people on the face of the planet: Kirie and Yasuo Goshima. Kirie bounced about squeaking in that ridiculous voice at the speed of light and yelling 'Shuichi-kun’ about three times every sentence, while Yasuo did very nearly the same thing but in a deeper voice while pathetically attempting to make some melon seem cool. Shuichi did not care about a stupid melon, what was with these people and melons? He much preffered grilled tarako, but honestly, as if these guys could afford any of that. Maybe if they sold all their already second-hand clothes. How did this idiot even win anything? I mean, a melon’s hardly much of a prize, but Mr Goshima was a rubbish potter who didn’t deserve any kind of a prize.

"So, uh…Kirie. How’s school?”

“O-oh! Shiho-chan k-keeps insisting th-that I, uh, that I need a boyfriend.”

 _Way to be as subtle as a herd of_ rhinoceroses _, Kirie._

“Huh. Well, I’m sure you’ll find a guy your own age who’s good-looking and all that stuff. This Shiho girl should mind her own business.”

“Uh, yeah! Well, uh, th-there’s a guy, wh-who likes me, but um–”

“Hey, Yasuo! How’s business been, lately?”

The older man practically buzzed with excitement upon being asked about his beloved job.

“I won! The competition! I entered an arts competition and I got third prize!”

Shuichi supposed that the melon was a by-product of that prize, because he knew which arts competition Yasuo was referring to. It took place in another town. And while a melon was quite the prize in Kurôzu-Cho, most towns had the funds to offer more worthwhile competition prizes to their winning competitors.

“I know that, I was a judge.”

_I gave your work a 1/10._

“Really? Wow, Mr Saito, I didn’t know you were into art!”

“Yeah, art’s cool. Mostly, I’m into judging it.”

Both Goshimas burst out laughing, and Shuichi chuckled halfheartedly, mostly at their faces and not at his joke. Just then, out of what seemed like nowhere, Bang Bang by Jessie J. Fighting the urge to pretend to be embarassed, Shuichi reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellphone. The person calling him was his colleague–-rival? Friend? Uh...apparent-arch-rival-who-Shuichi-sometimes-had-sex-with? Ichiro Tamura. A reporter from Midoriyama-Shi who was doing a story on Shuichi’s spiral-shaped mental case of a family. The teacher mentally thanked whatever deities may or may not exist, and simply walked out the door without giving any notice or reason for his leaving.

***4:30 IN THE AFTERNOON***

Ichiro Tamura, the self-proclaimed detective. He’d come from the next town over to study and do a story on the family who owned Kurôzu-Cho, the Saitos, who had recently come down with a bad case of unhealthy obsession with spirals. Literal spirals, not philosophical stuff that used spirals as symbolism for everything. Toshio Saito had plastered everything he deemed spirally enough all over every inch of his house, his wife Yukie was up to her eyeballs in spirals, and their son Shuichi did not care in the slightest. Trying to study this spiral-shaped mental case of a family was quite easily the best thing that had ever happened to Ichiro, career-wise. Most of his colleagues had to do mundane shit like ‘another guy was murdered for literally no reason’ or ‘there was an accident on 102nd street,’ while Ichiro was here talking about a crazy rich family who loved siprals! Weird stories were the best stories, and this particular one was the reason he’d met his new rival–-colleague? Friend? Random hot guy who was as smart as him? And that was none other than Shuichi Saito himself. Genius, that one. Sometimes it got mildly irritating, because Ichiro was so used to being the smartest person around. But at the same time, it was nice to have someone to talk to who was even half on his own level. At the same time as he usually did, Ichiro called Shuichi and told him to ‘get your ass over here.’ Which of course, Shuichi did. As soon as he shut the door behind him, he gave a loud sigh of relief.

“You totally saved me there, Mr Tamura.”

“Oh? Why is that, now?”

“I was at the Goshimas’ place and they were doing _the thing_.”

Ichiro shuddered comically, and then burst out laughing.

“Oh no, not _the thing_!”

“I know, right? I swear, that girl is as subtle as a volcano erupting.”

Oooh, her. Ichiro had, of course, heard about miss Kirie Goshima. A schoolgirl straight out of a particularly bad wish-fulfillment shoujo romance anime. He’d only actually met her once, but her voice was ridiculous.

“I practically rejected her this time and she still doesn’t get it.”

“Of course she doesn’t! This town is full of morons, Mr. Saito! You should know that!”

“I do know that. That’s why it’s so easy to control.”

Of course this town was easy to control, everyone in it was poor and stupid and most likely crushing on Shuichi.

“Obviously. Have you ever thought of conquering other towns? Maybe bigger, richer ones? Why settle for this shabby dump?”

“Hm, I get asked that a lot. To be honest, I don’t want any big rich towns. The people here, they’re poor, they’re stupid, they have no resources and no lives. They depend on me. And even if they don’t, they think they do. They can’t afford, literally and figuratively, to overthrow me. But if I were in charge of, say, Hiroshima? There are people there with actual lives and valid jobs. If enough people in a big town realize what an asshole I am, I’m dead. I can keep six-thousand poor sheeple under control easily, but I can’t keep one-point-one-seven-four million middle-class people under control, sheesh! I’ll happily stay in poor shabby little Kurozu-Cho, thank you very much.” Okay, wow. Of all the speeches Ichiro had been expecting, it wasn’t that. He’d almost expected the younger man to act bitterly about not controlling some bigger city or something. He certainly hadn’t expected him to actually prefer six-thousand poor sheeple to over a million middle-class people. “Wow. That’s actually very smart.” “I’m very smart, Mr Tamura. Just in case you haven’t noticed that yet.”

***5:00 IN THE EVENING***

There is a phenomenon people describe (though whether or not it actually happens is still up for debate) where girls and younger women are more likely to fall for a rude and aloof ‘alpha’ man than a kind man, and while some don’t believe that to be the case at all, it may very well have been in Kurozu-Cho. I really can’t come up with a better explanation as to why every straight girl between age thirteen and age thirty had a crush on Mr. Saito of all damn people. He was rich. That was all, really. Nothing else appealing about that man. He was rude, aloof, domineering, manipulative, and kinda ugly. Especially the manipulative part. He rarely ever actually hit people or whatever, he just forged some evidence that they or one of their parents had done something horrible and then fired them. Well, usually he was like this. He could be charming when he wanted to, just enough to lead people on, just enough to make them think maybe he wasn’t as bad as he seemed. Just enough, it seemed, to make everyone obey him willingly instead of just because they had to. Like I said; manipulative. But still. All these 13-30 year old girls and women had a quite hopeless case going on here. Not only because the young teacher was an asshole, not only because he didn’t know over half of them even existed, but there was another reason that completely nullified the chances of any female ever getting with him.

Simple: he was gay. A fact he’d hidden rather well from the general public by hanging out with this one girl frequently, because the assumption when a guy and a girl with an age difference of less than 15 years between them hang out together frequently is always that they’re going out. Thing is, at least in secret, Shuichi was already in a relationship of sorts. A messed up one, too–given that he was twenty-one and his partner was turning fifty in two weeks. The list of things wrong with the relationship didn’t stop at age, though; they loved to play mind games against each other, and each was constantly struggling for dominance over the other. Theirs was a rare example of a truly mutually abusive relationship where both partners were selfish and manipulative and neither really ‘started it.’ Nobody knew about them, though. And there were times when all the girls who were head over heels for Shuichi annoyed him so much he wondered whether it was better to continue letting them pester him or actually come out of the closet and admit to being with Ichiro. Neither sounded fun. One way, he had to listen to a bunch of girls fangirling over him. The other way, he risked losing control of the town. Bummer.

Anyway, to stop the endless context and speculation and begin narrating again, Shuichi was once again hanging out with Kirie, whom he was growing more and more irritated with each minute. She was stuttering and stammering about how her stupid friend Shiho Ishikawa kept pestering her about her relationship with Shuichi (once again, real subtle, Kirie). Shuichi gave the same response as he always did:

“She needs to mind her own business.”

He couldn’t safely reject her, not if he wanted to stay in the closet. But he could hint at the fact that she had about as much of a chance of dating him as a snowball had of surviving in a desert mid-summer.

“O-oh, uh, yeah! She does! Hm, by the way, Sh-Shuichi-kun, are you going to go to the University of Tokyo t-to study social psychology?”

“Yeah, probably, someday.”

 _Someday when I get an excuse to quit my job_.

“Have you thought at all about what university you’re going to go to after high school?”

“N-no! I’m just a tenth-grader, i-it’s too early to think about those things!”

Psh. Incompetent _and stupid_.

“It’s never too early. Thinking ahead does wonders. If you don’t plan ahead, you might just never get into any universities, and then you’ll be poor forever.”

“Oh!”

“Yeah.”

The look on her face was priceless. She was doing that one face where her eyebrows got all really furrowed and her eyes went really wide and her mouth contorted into this weird-ass shape, it was pretty hilarious. Shuichi called it 'the Kirie expression.' Of course, he didn’t laugh. He kept his perpetual blank face. And right then, that annoying air raid siren thing sounded. That sound irritated Shuichi (and, actually, most of the whole town) to no end, and it was unnecessary; Shuichi kept meaning to get it taken down or put out of service or whatever, but somehow he never actually did it. Kirie jumped half a foot in the air.

“I-I’m sorry! I have to go!”

She dashed off towards her ~~dump~~ house at an alarmingly fast pace–Shuichi was pretty sure he couldn’t run that fast, and he worked out. A lot. That was slightly scary.

***6:00 IN THE EVENING***

Walking through the front door of the Saitos’ house was akin to diving head first into a sea of spirals. The walls were plastered with everything spiral-shaped or spiral-patterned, and there were various spirally objects scattered all over the place. You couldn’t see the floor. Or the wallpaper. What you could see was spirals, oh, and Toshio and Yukie fighting. They always fought.

Ever since, well, ever. Yukie tried to say it was because of the stress from moving to Japan, but that was seventeen years ago, and they’d fought like a couple of seventy-year-olds back in Changwon, too. The spirals were just a new reason for them to bicker and insult each other. To be fair, Shuichi thought the spirals were unreasonable, too–it was ridiculous! If Toshio wanted to collect them, fine! But he could at least keep his collection confined to his own area of the house, instead of covering the whole manor with them!

“You are the most selfish, inconsiderate, obsessive…I-I sometimes wish we’d never met!”

“Ha! Says the hag who thinks she can dictate what her husband can and can’t take up as a hobby!”

“Old hag means a lot coming from the man who’s six years older than me! And I can tell you to get rid of all those spirals if I damn well want to!”

“No, you can’t! I can do what I want! I can collect spirals if I want, god dammit! The Spiral is such a mystical pattern, it’s just that peasants like you can’t see that in it!”

“Peasant? Did you just call me a peasant? Do I really need to remind you that half our family’s fortune was earned by me? I am not a peasant! And the damn Spiral is just a damn pattern!”

“Just a damn pattern? That is the most insane thing I’ve ever heard you say! The Spiral is so much more than just a pattern, and–”

“ _Toejora!_ Father, cut it out. Go up to your room, why don’t you? And fangirl over all your spirals.”

Both parents made a sort of expression that was similar to that you might expect a twelve-year-old to make after being caught watching BDSM porn by an authority figure.

“Ah, Shuichi. Sorry. We had…no idea you were there.”

“Yeah, mother, I’ve been standing here in the doorway for the last…uh…minute or so?”

“Oh. Well then, I’m sure you heard your father being ridiculous about his spirals–”

“I was being ridiculous? You’re the ridiculous one!”

Rolling his eyes are rubbing his temples, Shuichi trudged past his bickering parents and upstairs to his bedroom, where he told himself he was going to study the Spiral like he’d told Ichiro he would, but in fact he was going to drink beer and play Mario Kart with the volume up loud enough to block out the noise from downstairs.

***11:59 AT NIGHT***

Long after Yukie had stormed out of the house to go stay with a group of her friends because Toshio was driving her crazy, and Toshio had gone to bed, Ichiro had come to visit with information about the Spiral to share. While he’d been doing so, he and Shuichi had shared a few drinks and played Mario Kart against each other to determine which one of them was going to be the substitute science teacher at the local high school the next day. Shuichi had lost, and he intended to make Kirie’s class’ lives hell from 8:30 to 3:00 tomorrow to make up for having to be around them. Shuichi annoyedly supposed that the next day was going to be the exact same as today had been; get up, get to work late, harass some students, bike home, get yelled at by Futada, put up with Kirie, meet with Ichiro, go home and try his best to tolerate his parents, stay up all night drinking and playing Mario Kart. Then again, that was why alcoholic drinks existed, wasn’t it? To help people put up with everyday life. _Kudos to some guy like 9000 years ago_ , Shuichi thought, and downed his sixth beer that night.


End file.
